DECACS, Inc. and all its Initiatives

Archive for the ‘economics’ Category

NB Commentary:One of the things that I absolutely love about making my videos for YouTube and for my subscribers, is the fact that I learn so much while doing it.

I like to make my videos interactive, so I search the Internet for pictures to go along with what I am trying to convey. In doing so, I come across articles that feature the pictures that I wish to use. Then I end up reading the articles and finding out more and more and more about my subject. A 7-12 minute video may take me hours of reading materials I find on the web. I have always been a researcher, and I have always enjoyed the challenge of integrating my research into a readable and enjoyable theme.

I have posted several links in my blog that you will find a link to in the description below. Be prepared to learn something new or confirm what you already knew.

I also was trained in public speaking so I create a script for my videos so I can express myself as succinctly as possible. Sometimes I get tongue tied, which is just what I do and it shows you all that I am human.

I see making videos as a form of artistry. I feel my creative juices flowing and no sooner I put one up, I get more ideas about my next video. I love the hide and seek that YouTube plays with my videos, because they are monetized and sometimes YouTube feels that after all my hard work and hours of labor, a certain video is not ad friendly. Oh well, I just hope you folks out there don’t mind the ads too much and will come watch some of the other ones as well.

I have set up a Patreon account where you all can support me over there, ad free. I will let you know when I am ready to launch it.

So today, I am watching a video on a YouTube channel called blackmagik363

Video Title “Professor Griff- The Truth about Kanye West ‘Spiritual Attack’, Music Industry Rituals, and Witches”

I really enjoy Brother Rich’s interviewing style. He is well read and informed but still poses the questions in such a way as to want more information and to defer to his guest and gives them ample time to answer. He never interrupts, but is very much an active listener. In this interview with Professor Griff they come upon the question of Bill Clinton being initiated into Voodoo in Haiti. Brother Rich is quite curious as to why the Haitians would initiate a European into their occult magic. I do not think that Professor Griff’s answer was comprehensive enough so I wanted to expound on it in this video.

Being quite aware of the religion and having insight into African Spirituality, I think I can offer a more in depth understanding as to why the Haitians would accommodate Bill Clinton and his wife back in 1975 and since that time. It seems that Mr. Clinton wanted to win the election in his home state of Arkansas. Later, the presidential election, over George Bush, so he asked for help. In return he protected Haiti with the help of Hougan Max Beauvoir. It is not uncommon for the Priests and Priestess of African Spirituality to be visited by Heads of State from all over the Globe infact. They may be of all manner of other religious practices but they have heard or already know the power of the “rituals” that can be performed to help them win court cases, elections, positions

of power in government, money, wealth, etc. Some of them come, Bibles and Qur’ans in hand to seek out the help and advice of these Priests. They may do it in secret under the cover of darkness, pay their respects, pay their money, have the rituals done for them and/or do them themselves, or whatever is asked of them. It is not uncommon, not at all. While they may not speak of it publicly or may even denounce it, secretly they are there and they are doing the “work” to get what they want accomplished in their lives professionally, economically, etc.

“In the days leading up to Clinton’s visit, according to sources in Haiti, many occult preparations took place. These were intended not only to grant Clinton the power to overcome the challenges facing his presidency and defeat the Whitewater investigations, but also to give Aristide the power to continue to control Clinton.” http://www.wnd.com/1998/12/3471/

According to the Haiti Observateur, “During a March 31, 1995 visit to Haiti under Aristide’ s restored rule, Clinton took part in a Voodoo initiative ceremony intended to keep him impervious to Republican attacks and to guarantee his re-election.” (FrontPageMag.com, Feb. 20,. 2004). http://canadafreepress.com/2005/cover062805.htm

Clinton joined with Jean-Bertrand Aristide, a defrocked Catholic Priest, to gain more influence in the upcoming election to get Al Gore elected who would continue to favor the Haitian cause.This is where the work became nefarious and Bush ended up throwing up in the lap of the Japanese Prime minister because of the work Aristide did.Al Gore still did not win the election even though he should have, but it just shows that the “work” is not full proof and though it helped to ease the tension and impeachment of Bill Clinton, it did not keep him out of his own lust for young girls and children. But that’s another video.

So to answer the question of why?

Why would the Haitians or any other African Spiritual Practitioners give their rituals, rites and initiations to Europeans? Depending on the integrity of the Practitioners it can simply boil down to politics and economics. I am not too sure if he was actually initiated into the Haitian Priesthood. That initiation is not immediate and takes several years to complete, but I would surmise that he participated in ceremonies and may have gotten some talismans and may even been mounted by spirits. There is a reason why they called him, the “First Black President.” Little did we know he was chumming up with the Haitian Priests and attending Haitian ceremonies, but there was something about him. And it was said he had a certain charm. One that I never understood, but like it was when I didn’t drink the Obama Kool-Aid, I didn’t drink the Clinton Kool-Aid either.

The Clinton foundation ain’t got nothing on the “Pay-to-Play scenario when it comes to unscrupulous African Spirituality Practitioners. If the money is right, the influence right, they will give it to them. They will give you a Chieftaincy, they will give you a stool a crown, a title, what do you want? In return you will build in their country, you will give them money, you will transport them around in fancy cars and jets, you will give them a seat as an Ambassador or in the White House. You will protect their country with your military, you will in essence be accommodating to them, or whatever… It’s a form of spiritual bribery. And remember, the Priest, will never give you any power that will make you independent of him. And that’s another layer of this type of relationship with a Priest who you go to for nefarious reasons. One hand washes the other, but in the African Spirituality rituals of this nature, you don’t see the third hand. Or as some would call it “The Voodoo Double-Cross.”

But what goes around comes around the level of trust is skewed because everybody is using everybody. As the saying goes, there’s no honesty among thieves. So I ain’t surprised that Clinton is a said to be a so-called Voodoo priest down there in Haiti.

Don’t get me wrong, there are very righteous and upstanding African Spirituality Practitioners, but if he was initiated and they did not refuse him, then their ability to “see” him shrouded in all the corruption is very, very suspect. Why would they bring this criminal element into the fold, unless it was going to give them something in return?

Look at Haiti! How did his practice of Voodoo help Haiti? There in lies the answer as to why they would initiate him.

And we won’t go down the scummy road of money laundering, Pedophilia, human trafficking, sex slaves and child abuse. Or even into the very, very nefarious of Voodoo.

Like Professor Griff said and I paraphrase, every thing is energy. It can be used for righteousness or it can be used for nefarious reasons. It can be used to heal or to harm. Energy is neutral, it has no moral construct. It just is.

Just because someone is of African decent and using ancient African Spiritual mysticism does not mean they are not aware of and/or privy to using it for harm.

There is no Haiti without Bill Clinton. Rarely has the Republic entered the mainstream press since the January 12, 2010 earthquake without mention of the former US President. When it comes to Haiti, Clinton is omniscient, omnipotent, and omnipresent. In the days after the earthquake Clinton saturated the media with Haiti-related appearances on cable newsnetworks, a spread in Esquire Magazine, a speech at the UN, and editorials in prominent newspapers. Clinton is the co-chair of the Interim Commission for the Reconstruction of Haiti. He is the UN Special Envoy for Haiti. And he is the co-director of the Clinton Bush Haiti Fund, a foundation involved in number of neoliberal economic initiatives in Haiti. Clinton justifies his involvement by saying he is “responding to the needs of Haitians.” But what needs? Which Haitians? And to what end?

This would be Aristide’s second return from exile. He was ousted by a military coup in 1991 but Bill Clinton, when he was president, returned him to power in 1994 following a US intervention that forced out the military regime.

Aristide fled Haiti again in February 2004, leaving before dawn on a US plane as rebels approached the capital. He accused American diplomats of having kidnapped him, charges that Washington denied.

The Clintons and the Clinton Foundation have a long history in Haiti. During his time as president, Bill Clinton imposed three years of devastating economic sanctions against the country, in an effort to destabilize the military junta. With the failure of this policy, Clinton sent Marines to Haiti to restore Jean-Bertrand Aristide to the presidency. During Aristide’s term, Clinton demanded Haiti’s adherence to brutal IMF austerity policies, while cracking down on Haitian migrants trying to flee the devastated country to the US.

In the immediate aftermath of the 2010 Haitian earthquake, which killed upwards of 300,000 people, Clinton was dispatched as a UN special envoy and co-chairman of the Interim Haiti Recovery Committee to oversee the international aid and investment efforts in the country. Under his watch, there has been a continual looting of the country, with investment designed to exploit the country’s low-paid working class.

NB Commentary: Dr. Boyce Watkins & Zaza Ali discuss some things around black folks having their own business and what it means, more so than the title of the video suggests. My commentary addresses that part of the video. See my comments below.

Dr Boyce & Zaza Ali:Was Obama weak on police shootings of black men?

Before I comment I tend to read a lot of the comments to see what folks are talking about and to learn something new as well.

Watching the interaction between Dr. Boyce and ZaZa, I wondered if anyone else picked up the pixie dust. LOL

On the real though, I have been independently employed for most of my adult likf, and that’s about 40 years. At this point the idea of working 9-5 is terrifying to say the least. But folks who do work 9-5 for even half that long are just as terrified to step away, and that ain’t got nothing to do with color. This culture does not teach us to be anything else but workers. Get and education so you can get a job. Not get an education so you can provide jobs.

I think that we have to be careful not to be disingenuous. There is no multi-level pyramid scheme out there that will have you living high off the hog, basking in the sun on the beach all day, while your business grows and grows without you having to do something.

Having your own business is hard work. I don’t know about them two, but I put in more hours than I would ever have to working 9-5 and I am more responsible for what goes out because it’s mine.

I think there are many prongs that can be used for African Americans to become more self reliant. Some are employers others are employees. It’s how we play the game. I really am not too cool with doing it the capitalistic way, however, if you are going to build a business in this paradigm you are gonna have to cross the capitalistic Rubicon on some level. There are so many stipulations that are required for you to even become incorporated. And this system is set up to only let a few fish swim upstream.

I haven’t reviewed Dr. Boyce’s business work and teachings, I been too busy keeping my business afloat, but I hope that he is being real with everyone about the “paperwork” involved, and as the saying goes, “Black folks is scared of paperwork.”

Folks should take a few classes before you step out there. Others should have a trade. We need so many skilled workers, cause even though you have your own business you will fare much better if you have helpers. Everybody can’t be a chief, but a good solid business plan, with good solid workers who share your vision.. can work wonders.

We as a people have a lot of “Soul Work” to do on the level of having our own business and working with or for other Black folks.

So, yeah, get all the information you can get about starting your own business, and if it scares you too much, then see if you can work for an already established black business owner, and if that’s not an option, support Black businesses. I have seen so many come and go due to lack of support as well..

There’s nothing like having your own, but you gotta put in the grunt work and the sweat equity to make it happen and keep it happening. Real Talk!

How is it that having a European looking man, with blonde hair and blue eyes, from the middle east elevated to the status of God, is NOT promoting white supremacy?

For the next 30 days folks will be peppering their house, lawns, schools and churches and every where else with the image of a “white” child in a manger purported to be GOD incarnate. A so-called Christmas celebration that really is a cloak for white supremacy.

Think about it, from now on it will be quite alright for Jesus to be depicted as White! All over the world from the deepest jungles to the highest skyscraper, Jesus will not represent every racial group or ethnicity, he, his parents and most of everyone around down to the angels will all be white. What a mind f***ck that must be for every body! They get to promote White Supremacy unabashed and take your money in the process. People keep saying folks are waking up, but this time of year makes me wonder on the real.

What do I suggest?

I suggest the truth, the real story…

No trees in houses;

No more tree farms for the purpose of chopping them down for folks to drag into their houses;

No more high electric bills from burning lights all day and night.

No more competitions about who’s house is burning the most Christmas lights in the most beautiful way;

No more suicides because of feeling unloved during these times;

No gifts given to folks when it ain’t their birthday;

No jacking up commercialism and credit card debt;

No more propaganda through movies; TV; radio; advertisements; etc. seducing people into buy, consume, buy, consume;

No false promises;

No so-called “Christmas Parties” where people only go to “see” what someone else is gonna give them;

No more pretending that “Jesus” was born on Dec. 25;

No more trashing the vibration of the Winter Solstice with greed and avarice.

No more soup kitchens once a year to feed the homeless; feed them all year;

No more Santa Claus lies; while chastising our children for lying;

No more thousands upon thousands if Not millions of turkeys; chickens; sheep; pigs and cows being slaughtered;

No more stuffing the gut with GMO laden food dishes; No more lies;

No more betrayals; these are some of the things I suggest.

If you really want to let the banksters know the real deal; don’t buy anything till January 30th that is Not necessary for sustenance.

And finally; what would “Jesus” say if he came back and saw how much BS is going on in his name. Of course I confer that if he really exists than he sees it already. And judging with what they say about him; I am sure he is and would be appalled. And then they took his original image; if there ever really was one; and made him look like a European!! Come on; why did they do that? The original Jews did Not look like that.

But I digress.

Unless this “Jesus” is a megalomaniac; I would suggest; he is shaking his head pretty hard at this foolishness.

Megalomaniac:

“1. A psycho-pathological condition characterized by delusional fantasies of wealth; power; or omnipotence.

Okay, I am probably gonna get some flack for this comment but…. I kinda see his point. If a government can give you dignity, it can take it away. I think he is saying that human dignity is not for sale or barter. That if people believe that their dignity is arbitrary, then anyone can deny it or determine it.

With the perception of knowing who you are, no matter what anyone says or does to you, you are assured within yourself than no one, can take your human dignity away from you. I have to say that that point to me is very powerful and may be missed because he is talking against marriage equality. I believe that is how Africans survived through slavery, that is how any oppressed people survive, i.e., the Muslims in the Middle East who are so outrageously demonized. They still hole their heads up high. I could site so many other examples but suffice it to say, human dignity is not an arbitrary construct of someone’s imagination that can be imposed on another, unless….. the other accepts it and thus gives up their personal power and self determination.

Once a person believes that someone else can take their human dignity away, they whither and die. Only the strong survive, despite the odds, and I think that is the real message of his statement.

No government, person place or thing should have that much power over how someone feels dignified. I understand how a system can attempt to belittle, downgrade, even demoralize another so called “inferior” but a man is as he thinketh. If he believes he has no dignity then no one can give it to him or take it away. He is simply unaware of who he is and therefore is susceptible to viewing himself through the lens of his oppressor.

I have always said that LGBT folks who want to get married should just do that without having to beg to be recognized by the government. There are various ways that it can be done, through contracts, notarized documents and various other steps that can be taken. There were and are always someone who will marry you, and if you can’t find that someone, marry yourself. There is always a way to get around it.

Societies have socialized and institutionalized marriage around the world. They see marriage as a communal act between those who marry and the community they belong to. Over time it has become a system of barter, protocols, laws, restrictions, politics and bellicose religious indictments. It seldom becomes a personal matter between persons but rather a socio-economic and political statement about what and who you are. Because human beings are socialized into believing they must be accepted by their communities, families, churches and other religious institutions, they go through the rituals that in some instances have nothing at all to do with how they feel on the inside. Marriages have gone from being partnerships and dedication to having property and the value, worth and status that comes with it. As a result, people want to be “acknowledge”. And in this case, do to the social construct of this Nation, the USA, they felt the need to make it to the Supreme Court with their case.

Actually, marriage is really an arbitrary situation that is deemed to exist between the people who are “married” and not necessarily something that has to be sanctioned by others. What I mean is that there are so many kinds of partnerships that have contributed to the making of families around the world. In fact, polygamy is a more natural construct than the ownership of another that happens in Western style marriages. The spiritual connection that folks feel towards one another is often shrouded in the external, “how to be” in a relationship that often what is truly happening between the souls of individuals gets lost because of the pressures of society. Some people never marry and live together as a devoted couple for years and years, helping and supporting and loving and even baring children together. Are their unions any more worthy than the ones that are “sanctioned” by the larger community? Just think, with all this marriage equality business folks can run out and spend more money on getting married when they could have very well saved that money to build a business together. And then after all that money is spent to please the onlookers, some of these self same marriages end in divorce. Why? Because they were sanctioned or was it because the true connection on the Soul level was “NOT” made and therefore there was no “glue-on” to hold it together to stand the test of time.

Supreme Court Justice Thomas may very well be married to a European woman and some may say that there was a time where he could not have been legally married to her, but does that or did that determine his love or devotion to her??? Obviously not. And I doubt if her being married to him diminished her dignity. Though I am guessing here, it still stands to reason that no one can tell you who you can love or not love, marry or not marry, or at least no one should have that kind of power over your life, and if they do, to me, there is something very wrong with this picture.All too often people rely upon someone or something to acknowledge their worth and “dignity” instead of knowing who they are and that it matters not, who else knows it. I think the movie “The Green Mile” shows how a man can remained dignified, no matter how he is treated. He knew who he was and what powers he had, he sincerely knew where his heart was and that he was innocent, but he even went to the electric chair with dignity. I believe that is what Judge Thomas is saying. He may not realize it himself but he said it and it makes sense to me.

Clarence Thomasis one of the most conservative and one of the most controversial justices currently sitting on the Supreme Court. Justice Scalia gets a lot of attention, in part because his dissents of late have been hyperbolic and bombastic, but Justice Thomas rarely gets much attention.He deserves a lot more, and not in a good way.The 67-year old Georgia-born jurist who replaced – of all people, Thurgood Marshall – on the bench, offered a stunning statement in his dissent of the same-sex marriage case.“Perhaps recognizing that these cases do not actually involve liberty as it has been understood, the majority goes to great lengths to assert that its decision will advance the ‘dignity’ of same-sex couples,” Justice Thomas writes. “The flaw in that reasoning, of course, is that the Constitution contains no ‘dignity’ Clause, and even if it did, the government would be incapable of bestowing dignity.”

“Human dignity has long been understood in this country to be innate. When the Framers proclaimed in the Declaration of Independence that ‘all men are created equal’ and ‘endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights,’ they referred to a vision of mankind in which all humans are created in the image of God and therefore of inherent worth. That vision is the foundation upon which this Nation was built.”OK, you’re probably thinking, this is nuts, and insensitive, but wait, there’s more.

“The corollary of that principle is that human dignity cannot be taken away by the government. Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved. Those held in internment camps did not lose their dignity because the government confined them. And those denied governmental benefits certainly do not lose their dignity because the government denies them those benefits. The government cannot bestow dignity, and it cannot take it away.”Let’s do that again.“Slaves did not lose their dignity (any more than they lost their humanity) because the government allowed them to be enslaved.”Is he serious?Being property, being owned by another person, with absolutely no rights, subjected to violence and rape and starvation and whipping and all sorts of other indignities does not cause one to lose their dignity nor their humanity?Speaking personally, I have never been a slave, nor confined in an internment camp, but I can imagine how horrific that was.How is it possible that Justice Thomas cannot?And, as a gay man who married two years ago, almost to this day, I can without qualification state that my personal dignity was greatly affected – positively – upon becoming a legally married man.The exact moment my husband and I were pronounced married I was a changed person. My world changed, and yes, it had to do with legal acceptance and validation, and dignity.Something Justice Thomas, sadly, must not know anything about.Justice Thomas’ dissent is so vile and offensive, he’s actually right now the number two trending topic, right under #LoveWins:

Money trail leads home to New Zealand, Sunday Star-Times

Leaked documents reveal one of New Zealand’s richest families was for a time at the heart of a major international tax haven company that hit the news in the United States last week.John Spencer, NewZealand’s richest man in the 1980s and still incredibly wealthy, was – with his family – majority owners of the company called TrustNet, whose extremely secret client records have been leaked en masse to a Washington DC-based journalism organisation. The leaks reveal the identity of tens of thousands of people who use tax havens: some involved in dodgy activities and evading tax, others in lawful activities including companies doing business across political borders and individuals living in multiple countries or legitimately minimising their tax.

Surprisingly, the leaks show NewZealanders are involved extensively in this shadowy world of offshore companies and secret bank accounts.

The company at the centre of the Washington leaks was set up by New Zealanders, has been staffed by many NewZealanders and for 14 years was majority-owned by the Spencers.

The Spencers have courted controversy. John Spencer waged a 19-year battle to stop public access to the Stony Batter gun emplacement on his Waiheke Island farm, including barricading a public road. The Star-Times revealed in 2005 that his son Berridge and daughter Mertsi were secret National Party donors. And now Spencer is the Kiwi connection to secret tax haven records that may be the largest leak of financial information in history.

They expose the hidden activities of wealthy, secretive or criminal people in around 150 countries and territories. In total, about one-and-a-half million documents were leaked to the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ), an independent network of reporters who work together on cross-border investigations. There is currently hot debate around the world about corporations which don’t pay tax and the respectable bankers and lawyers who assist them.

The Tax Justice Network and other organisations are pushing for governments like NewZealand’s to stop tolerating tax havens and work together to close them down. TrustNet has helped set up and manage companies, trusts and bank accounts in tax havens for about 80,000 individual clients.

According to overseas news stories based on the leaks, they include the mega-rich, corrupt regimes, corporations dodging tax, fraudsters, companies shifting wealth out of poor countries, companies with controversial or secretive business, mercenaries and spies, and also many ordinary people who want to move their money and business “offshore”.

The Tax Justice Network estimates that about one-third of the world’s wealth is held offshore and about half of all the world’s trade flows through tax havens. NewZealanders have had occasional glimpses of the offshore world. Star-Times stories have exposed:* Geoffrey Taylor, and his sons Ian and Michael, setting up companies in NewZealand for North Korean arms trading and organised crime;* an Auckland Burger King cook was a director for some of these companies;* and a Nelson woman who supposedly owned a Moldovan TV station, again through a chain of Taylor companies.Mostly these people and their shell companies have been pawns in a much bigger system.

KIWIS IN KEY ROLESThe TrustNet leaks show NewZealanders in key roles helping to run the system. TrustNet markets itself today as the largest independent offshore services company in Asia. It was set up 25 years ago by Kiwis in what was then the newly established Cook Islands tax haven.

In the early 1980s business lobbyists from New Zealand and Australia persuaded the Cook Islands government that becoming a tax haven would bring riches to the small island group. These lobbyists included New Zealander lawyer Trevor Clarke, “father of the Cook Islands tax haven”, who with others used the new tax haven laws to build a company called European Pacific.

Documents about European Pacific’s tax schemes were leaked and tabled in the NewZealand Parliament by MP Winston Peters, igniting the Winebox scandal (see breakout).

Another key figure was NewZealand lawyer Mike Mitchell, the Cook Islands solicitor-general in the early 1980s and main government adviser as the tax haven was established. He resigned from that role in 1986 to move into the offshore business himself. On April 29, 1987, he established an offshore services company called Pacific Trustee Company. The company was later renamed TrustNet, the company at the centre of last week’s leaks.

TrustNet’s first chief executive was another New Zealand lawyer, Steve Breed, who was joined a few years later by fellow Auckland law school graduate David Sceats. Early staff included people who’d worked on the Cook Islands Winebox schemes. The European Pacific tax expert accused in court of leaking the Winebox documents, NewZealand lawyer George Couttie, had moved on to work for TrustNet in Hong Kong. But soon after this accusation was made, according to internal documents, senior TrustNet staff recorded a terse company resolution that “accepted” his resignation “effective from the date hereof”.In contrast, European Pacific’s former senior executive Geoff Barry was later hired by TrustNet and rose to become the chief executive officer. Today, 10 years later, he is executive director of TrustNet’s Hong Kong office.

Spencer’s ownership of TrustNet was never publicised. It came to light only during analysis of the leaked records. A note about an obscure offshore entity says “Client is our big boss, John Spencer”.Spencer, who had inherited his family’s Caxton toilet paper empire, owned, with his family, a majority share of TrustNet from July 1990 until September 2004, through a Bahamas company called International Trustee Holding Company Limited. John and Berridge Spencer also used TrustNet to place some of their own money and investments in a complex web of offshore companies and trusts. These were based in the British Virgin Islands and Cook Islands, with names such as Northern Lights Trust, Star One Trust and Tristar Capital Service Limited. A spokesperson for the Spencer family said neither John nor Berridge Spencer have been New Zealand residents since the 1990s and in those circumstances it was hardly surprising that the family have assets invested outside of NewZealand.

With the Spencers’ backing TrustNet grew quickly, opening offices in Hong Kong in 1991, the British Virgin Islands in 1993 and Singapore in 1994. The early clients included a controversial Indonesian rainforest logging tycoon named Prajogo Pangestu, who had four British Virgin Islands companies.

TREVOR CLARKEAnother TrustNet client was the former European Pacific manager Trevor Clarke. He had his own set of offshore companies and trusts administered by TrustNet. They were home to millions of dollars of assets, the leaked documents reveal, and TrustNet staff were given special instructions about keeping them secret. One document reads: “We are to contact Trevor by phone only unless otherwise instructed . . . No documents are to be kept here. All docs are to be held in our Hong Kong office.”

Clarke was appointed chair of the Cook Islands’ new Financial Supervisory Commission from 2003 until 2010, which was set up to oversee the offshore industry. Throughout those years he had the secretive offshore trusts and companies. Clarke responded that he was not “a user of any Cook Islands entities” – his companies and trusts were in Samoa and the British Virgin Islands – and said these were set up well before his role as FSC chair. He had disclosed them to a number of authorities. He said there were lots of reasons for people to want to have assets outside the country where they live. The secrecy instructions did not come from him, he said.

The TrustNet files also show a close relationship between the company and the BNZ and ANZ banks, which had dedicated staff for offshore banking. The leaked documents show bank staff routinely helping TrustNet move money in and out of its clients’ offshore bank accounts held at the BNZ Singapore branch and ANZ Cook Islands branch.

In September 2004, the Spencers sold TrustNet to a Singaporean offshore lawyer named David Chong. But many of the NewZealanders, especially lawyers, continued to work in the company and be part of tax haven politics.

Lawyers created the offshore world and lawyers and accountants run it. They lobby in each tax haven for special laws to attract clients and often actually write the laws themselves. The leaked TrustdhNet papers show this clearly in the minutes of the Cook Islands Trusdhtee Company Association. The offshore services company heads are seen sitting around deciding what laws they want, putting the hat around for money to have them drafted and then arranging to predhsent the new laws to the Cook Islands government. The same lawyers then use these laws to help their clients.

They also deal with the problems when things go wrong. One of TrustdhNet’s NewZealand lawyers Penny Purcell was on duty, for instance, when two officers from the Hong Kong Commercial Crime Bureau turned up on August 20, 2007, at TrustNet’s harbour-front offices. They were investigating a fraud case involving a British Virgin Islands company called Sound Financial Management Limited.

The secret TrustNet files include Purcell’s written record of the meeting. Detective Sergeant Steven Lam produced a formal letter from the Hong Kong commissioner of police requesting ‘‘all relevant documents’’ about Sound Financial Management Limited and details of the company’s director and shareholder. Purcell replied that the officers would need to contact TrustNet’s British Virgin Islands office and, according to her own notes, assured them ‘‘we do not keep any files or records here’’.

She said the police ‘‘were surprised’’ the office had no records and asked how this could be ‘‘if the client is based here in Hong Kong’’. ‘‘I then explained,’’ Purcell wrote, ‘‘that we acted as a marketing/secretarial office but that all information including the registers of the Company were kept in its registered office.’’Detective Sergeant Lam tried one last time, she wrote, asking if they kept any information there in Hong Kong, including correspondence. ‘‘I said no,’’ Purcell wrote. A few days later TrustNet repeated the denial by letter. ‘‘Portcullis TrustNet (Hong Kong) Limited does not hold any corporate or statutory records of the Company, nor is it required to,’’ the letter said. However, the details the police were looking for would have been instantly available on Purdhcell’s computer. The leaked TrustdhNet documents show that she routinely used the company’s Offshore Management Information System (OMIS), which was available in all the TrustNet offices and contained all the client records.

The OMIS database, which was leaked to ICIJ, lists Sound Financial Management’s director and shareholder as Glen Douglas Crankshaw, a Canadian living near Bangkok. TrustNet helped his company open a bank account at the Standard Chartered Bank, Hong Kong branch, located on the ground floor of the same building as TrustNet. According to Purcell’s notes, she told them none of this. Two years later the Hong Kong police issued an arrest warrant for Crankshaw for ‘‘dealing with property known or reasonably believed to represent the proceeds of indictable crime’’. They had traced him through a different offshore company, with the similar name ‘‘GS Sound Management Limited’’.

Purcell has since returned to help run TrustNet’s office on Auckland’s North Shore. She remains part of a network of NewZealand offshore lawyers scattered in tax havens around the world. They include former TrustNet lawyer Barry Mitchell who, according to court documents, gave assistance during the setting up of the Trinity investment scheme, NewZealand’s largest tax avoidance case; and Act Party-aligned blogger Cathy Odgers (‘‘Cactus Kate’’) who has worked as an offshore lawyer in the British Virgin Islands and Hong Kong.

Various offshore lawyers have brought their skills home, taking advantage of NewZealand’s loose company and trust law. The original TrustNet lawyers, Breed and Sceats, came home and set up Nexus Trust, promoting NewZealand’s tax haven potential to foreign clients. Two other former Cook Island lawyers, Nick Shepherd and (former European Pacific executive) Mike Reynolds set up Anchor Trustees which offers services to ‘‘non-resident families and corporates’’.

Long-term TrustNet client Tim Brears on Auckland’s North Shore offers clients advice on the ‘‘advantages of moving ownership and control of assets and investment offshore out of NewZealand’’.

Nicky Hager has worked in a multi-country team for the past 15 months analysing the leaked materials and co-ordinating local journalists in Asia, Africa and part of Europe who collaborated in the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists project, www.icij.org.

Chokwe Lumumba, mayor of Jackson, dies at 66

February 25, 20147:32PM ET

The first-term mayor was an attorney with a long record of black radical activism

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba has died at the age of 66.AP Photo/Rogelio V. Solis

Jackson Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, a prominent attorney and human rights advocate who persuaded local voters into accepting a sales tax to fix crumbling roads and infrastructure in Mississippi’s capital city, died Tuesday, authorities said. He was 66.

City officials said Lumumba died at St. Dominic Hospital. A cause of death was not immediately clear, though City Council president Charles Tillman, who was sworn in as acting mayor, said he had met Monday with Lumumba, who had a cold.

“He kind of joked around about it,” Tillman said.

Lumumba served one term on the City Council and was sworn in as mayor last July. He was one of two candidates who defeated then-Mayor Harvey Johnson Jr. in the Democratic primary in early June. Lumumba then defeated businessman Jonathan Lee in the general election.

As mayor, Lumumba persuaded Jackson voters to pass a referendum in January to add a 1-cent local sales tax to help pay for improvements to crumbling roads and an aging water and sewer system. He said then that the city needed an estimated $1.2 billion to completely fix its infrastructure, and raising sales tax by 1 percent would bring in at least $15 million a year until the tax expires in 20 years. Lumumba said the local tax will improve infrastructure, create jobs and increase public safety.“It is with a heavy heart that we inform you that our beloved brother, human rights activist and mayor of this great city, Mayor Chokwe Lumumba, passed away this afternoon,” Safiya Omari, Lumumba’s chief of staff, said Tuesday night.

Security guards escorted her away in tears. Omari made the announcement under Lumumba’s portrait inside Jackson’s antebellum city hall and surrounded by the seven members of the City Council. The building was crowded with city employees, politicians, ministers and other residents of Mississippi’s largest city.

State law says the council will set a special election for voters to choose a new mayor. The council has up to 10 days to meet about taking that action, then the election must be 30 to 45 days laterAfter the City Council adjourned its brief meeting, Bishop Ronnie Crudup, one of Jackson’s most prominent ministers, led the crowd in prayer.

“Lord, he was a good man, a man who had vision, vision for the city,” Crudup prayed.City Council member Melvin Priester Jr. credited Lumumba for bringing a spirit of openness to city government.“He has done a great deal in the last couple of months to change the culture of government in Jackson,” said Priester, who was elected earlier this year to Lumumba’s former seat on the City Council.

In 2011, Lumumba persuaded then-Gov. Haley Barbour, a Republican, to release sisters Jamie Scott and Gladys Scott from a Mississippi prison after they had served 16 years for an armed robbery they said they didn’t commit. Barbour suspended their life sentences and released them. The sisters did not receive a pardon from Barbour when he left office in early 2012, although he granted pardons and other reprieves to more than 200 people during his final days as governor. Barbour released the women on the condition that Gladys give a kidney to Jamie.

Mississippi Democratic Party Chairman Rickey Cole issued a statement Tuesday saying Democrats are “deeply saddened by the loss of the promising new Mayor of our Capital City, the Honorable Chokwe Lumumba.”

“His young administration has been a great beacon of hope for so many of us,” Cole said. “He was just beginning to make an effective start tackling the long-neglected challenges faced by our capital city.”

Republican Gov. Phil Bryant issued a statement Tuesday saying he and his wife, Deborah, “are shocked and saddened by the news of Mayor Lumumba’s passing and are praying for his loved ones.”“Just a short time ago, I had the opportunity to join the mayor in a church pew as we welcomed a new development to the city,” Bryant said. “His enthusiasm for Jackson will be deeply missed.”

Lumumba was born in Detroit as Edwin Taliaferro, and changed his name in 1969, when he was in his early 20s. He said he took his new first name from an African tribe that resisted slavery centuries ago and his last name from African independence leader Patrice Lumumba.

He moved to Jackson in 1971 as a human rights activist. He went to law school in Michigan in the mid-1970s and returned to Jackson in 1988.

Lumumba was involved with the Republic of New Afrika in the 1970s and ’80s. He said in 2013 that the group had advocated “an independent predominantly black government” in the southeastern U.S. Lumumba was vice president of the group during part of his stint. The group also advocated reparations for slavery, and was watched by an FBI counterintelligence operation.

“The provisional government of Republic of New Afrika was always a group that believed in human rights for human beings,” Lumumba told The Associated Press in a 2013 interview. “I think it has been miscast in many ways. It has never been any kind of racist group or ‘hate white’ group in any way. … It was a group which was fighting for human rights for black people in this country and at the same time supporting the human rights around the globe.”

Lumumba said during the 2013 mayoral campaign that he has shown he can lead across racial lines. In 1990, when the Ku Klux Klan planned to march through Jackson, he said he organized counterdemonstrators, including a predominantly white group of Millsaps College students. He also said he wants to empower people who have been left out of the economic system.

“We have to talk about equitable development,” Lumumba said. “Each portion of the population should be able to develop, and no portion of the population should be given any preferential treatment.”

by Marjorie Cohn and Jeanne MirerAugust 28, 2013from GlobalResearch WebsiteMarjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, former president of the National Lawyers Guild (NLG), and deputy secretary general of the International Associationof Democratic Lawyers (IADL).New York attorney Jeanne Mirer is president of the IADL and co-chair of the NLG’s International Committee.Both Cohn and Mirer are on the board of the Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility CampaignThe Obama administration will reportedly launch a military strike to punish Syria’s Assad government for its alleged use of chemical weapons. A military attack would invariably kill civilians for the ostensible purpose of showing the Syrian government that killing civilians is wrong. “What we are talking about here is a potential response… to this specific violation of international norms,” declared White House press secretary Jay Carney.But a military intervention by the United States in Syria to punish the government would violate international law.

For the United States to threaten to and/or launch a military strike as a reprisal is a blatant violation of the United Nations Charter. The Charter requires countries to settle their international disputes peacefully.

Article 2(4) makes it illegal for any country to either use force or threaten to use force against another country. Article 2(7) prohibits intervention in an internal or domestic dispute in another country.

NATO Using Chemical Weapons

The only time military force is lawful under the Charter is when the Security Council approves it, or under Article 51, which allows a country to defend itself if attacked. “The use of chemical weapons within Syria is not an armed attack on the United States,” according to Notre Dame law professor Mary Ellen O’Connell.The United States and the international community have failed to take constructive steps to promote peace-making efforts, which could have brought the crisis in Syria to an end.

The big powers instead have waged a proxy war to give their “side” a stronger hand in future negotiations, evaluating the situation only in terms of geopolitical concerns. The result has been to once again demonstrate that military solutions to political and economic problems are no solution at all.

In the meantime, the fans of enmity between religious factions have been inflamed to such a degree that the demonization of each by the other has created fertile ground for slaughter and excuses for not negotiating with anyone with “blood on their hands.”

Despite U.S. claims of “little doubt that Assad used these weapons,” there is significant doubt among the international community about which side employed chemical weapons.

Many view the so-called ‘rebels’ as trying to create a situation to provoke U.S. intervention against Assad. Indeed, in May, Carla del Ponte, former international prosecutor and current UN commissioner on Syria, concluded that opposition forces used sarin gas against civilians.

The use of any type of chemical weapon by any party would constitute a war crime. Chemical weapons that kill and maim people are illegal and their use violates the laws of war. The illegality of chemical and poisoned weapons was first established by the Hague regulations of 1899 and Hague Convention of 1907.

It was reiterated in the Geneva Convention of 1925 and the Chemical Weapons Convention.

The Rome Statute for the International Criminal Court specifically states that employing, “poison or poisoned weapons” and “asphyxiating, poisonous or other gases, and all analogous liquids, materials or devices” are war crimes, under Article 8.The prohibition on the use of these weapons is an international norm regardless of whether any convention has been ratified.

As these weapons do not distinguish between military combatants and civilians, they violate the principle of distinction and the ban on weapons which cause unnecessary suffering and death contained in the Hague Convention.

Under the Nuremberg Principles, violations of the laws of war are war crimes.

The self-righteousness of the United States about the alleged use of chemical weapons by Assad is hypocritical. The United States used napalm and employed massive amounts of chemical weapons in the form of Agent Orange in Vietnam, which continues to affect countless people over many generations.

Recently declassified CIA documents reveal U.S. complicity in Saddam Hussein’s use of chemical weapons during the Iran-Iraq war, according to Foreign Policy: “In contrast to today’s wrenching debate over whether the United States should intervene to stop alleged chemical weapons attacks by the Syrian government, the United States applied a cold calculus three decades ago to Hussein’s widespread use of chemical weapons against his enemies and his own people.

The Reagan administration decided that it was better to let the attacks continue if they might turn the tide of the war. And even if they were discovered, the CIA wagered that international outrage and condemnation would be muted.”In Iraq and Afghanistan, the United States used, 1. cluster bombs 2. depleted uranium 3. white phosphorous gas § Cluster bomb cannisters contain tiny bomblets, which can spread over a vast area.

Unexploded cluster bombs are frequently picked up by children and explode, resulting in serious injury or death. § Depleted uranium (DU) weapons spread high levels of radiation over vast areas of land. In Iraq, there has been a sharp increase in Leukemia and birth defects, probably due to DU. § White phosphorous gas melts the skin and burns to the bone.The Geneva Convention Relative to the Protection of Civilian Persons in time of War (Geneva IV) classifies “willfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health” as a grave breach, which constitutes a war crime.

The use of chemical weapons, regardless of the purpose, is atrocious, no matter the feigned justification.

A government’s use of such weapons against its own people is particularly reprehensible. Secretary of State John Kerry said that the purported attack by Assad’s forces, “defies any code of morality” and should “shock the conscience of the world.”He went on to say that, “there must be accountability for those who would use the world’s most heinous weapons against the world’s most vulnerable people.”Yet the U.S. militarily occupied over 75% of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques for 60 years, during which time the Navy routinely practiced with, and used, ○ Agent Orange ○ depleted uranium ○ napalm,…and other toxic chemicals and metals such as TNT and mercury.

This occurred within a couple of miles of a civilian population that included thousands of U.S. citizens. The people of Vieques have lived under the colonial rule of the United States now for 115 years and suffer from terminal health conditions such as elevated rates of cancer, hypertension, respiratory and skin illnesses and kidney failure.

While Secretary Kerry calls for accountability by the Assad government, the U.S. Navy has yet to admit, much less seek atonement, for decades of bombing and biochemical warfare on Vieques.

The U.S. government’s moral outrage at the use of these weapons falls flat as it refuses to take responsibility for its own violations.

President Barack Obama admitted, “If the U.S. goes in and attacks another country without a UN mandate and without clear evidence that can be presented, then there are questions in terms of whether international law supports it…”The Obama administration is studying the 1999, “NATO air war in Kosovo as a possible blueprint for acting without a mandate from the United Nations,” the New York Times reported.But NATO’s Kosovo bombing also violated the UN Charter as the Security Council never approved it, and it was not carried out in self-defense.

The UN Charter does not permit the use of military force for “humanitarian interventions.” Humanitarian concerns do not constitute self-defense. In fact, humanitarian concerns should spur the international community to seek peace and end the suffering, not increase military attacks, which could endanger peace in the entire region.

Moreover, as Phyllis Bennis of the Institute for Policy Studies and David Wildman of Human Rights & Racial Justice for the Global Ministries of the United Methodist Church wrote, “Does anyone really believe that a military strike on an alleged chemical weapons factory would help the Syrian people, would save any lives, would help bring an end to this horrific civil war”?Military strikes will likely result in the escalation of Syria’s civil war. “Let’s be clear,” Bennis and Wildman note. “Any U.S. military attack, cruise missiles or anything else, will not be to protect civilians – it will mean taking sides once again in a bloody, complicated civil war.”Anthony Cordesman, military analyst from the Center for Strategic and International Studies, asks, “Can you do damage with cruise missiles? Yes. Can you stop them from having chemical weapons capability? I would think the answer would be no.”The United States and its allies must refrain from military intervention in Syria and take affirmative steps to promote a durable ceasefire and a political solution consistent with international law.

If the U.S. government were truly interested in fomenting peace and promoting accountability, it should apologize to and compensate the victims of its own use of chemical weapons around the world.